Seeing as though I am underemployed and make 60% of what I was making 3 years ago & 40% of what I should be making, I'm not okay with it being over 30% but unless I sell my house and take a bath, it is what it is.
Post by zacksbride on Sept 26, 2012 18:46:01 GMT -5
About 12%, but SL are about 10% and until recently childcare was another 20% - so it's low but with all our other fixed expenses and trying to build up down payment/e fund its where I am comfortable
Post by penguingrrl on Sept 26, 2012 19:31:34 GMT -5
Ours is far more than we're comfortable with, but not by choice. DH got a postdoc in NJ, which is great since it's where we're from, but housing costs are high, especially in a good school district (necessary since our oldest is in K) so we're paying more than we would like percentage wise.
Post by hannamaren on Sept 26, 2012 19:44:46 GMT -5
Rght now it is 10%ish and I love it. We want to buy, and then it will be closer to 30% and that shouldnt worry me, but with nanny costs and SLs it freaks me out
We're only comfortable with it while DH's employer is paying our second set of housing costs. If we had to pay our mortgage in one city AND rent in another, we wouldn't choose to be here right now.
You need to figure your housing costs based on NET - not GROSS income. You can't spend what does not come in the paycheck.
My recommendation is 25-28% of TAKEHOME pay for housing (30-35% in a HCOL area) . That includes mortgage+PMI+insurance+taxes+utilities+HOA
Adjust if you have alot of debt or other situations that impact your finances.
I didn't read the poll carefully -- I totally assumed she meant net. I don't even know what my monthly gross income is. The math would be easy because I know what my salary is, but it has never been worth calculating because there's so much of that money that I never see (and it would be depressing to know exactly how much).
It's fine. We live in HCOL and my H is in grad school so we're not rolling in the dough but it's ok. Half my friends here pay 50% or more and I pay 29%
Ours is about 32% of takehome, but we live in HCOL. I was fine with that until all these polls came up and I realized how many people pay so much less for housing. Oh well, it is what it is.
If I wasn't comfortable with the amount, I wouldn't pay that amount?
We weren't comfortable when we bought our house. We were stupid. It was 30% gross (and much higher net, and we didn't even contribute to retirement right away) when we bought, and we were definitely house poor until our incomes grew.
I have no idea how to account for what part of my housing payment is tax-deductible. I know a large part of our maintenance payment is. I just get a little slip around tax time from the board giving us the dollar figure we can deduct on our taxes for that. And then I know some part of our mortgage payment is also tax-deductible.
Does any of this matter, though, if you're doing gross instead of net?
And how scientific is this, really? So many factors go into your housing costs v. someone else's- maybe someone chose to pay all cash and only pays property taxes, but someone else chose to get a low-rate mortgage and invest available money in a higher-yielding investment. How do you compare those two situations?